The Goldsboro B-52 Incident | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- Signup for your FREE trial to The Great Courses Plus here: ow.ly/WcjN30rkCDF
"In the early hours of the 24th of January 1961 a B-52 military aircraft was in the middle of a routine operation when it encountered severe technical difficulties..."
As always, THANK YOU to all my Patreon patrons: you make this channel possible.
/ fascinatinghorror
SOCIAL MEDIA:
► Twitter: / truehorrortales
► TikTok: / fascinatinghorror
► Suggestions: hello@fascinatinghorror.co.uk
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
This is one hell of an “oopsie daisy.”
That was the name of the bomb.
Did iii dooo that
It’s a whole field of oopsie daisies
Just as bad as when we crashed a b-2... because we goofed alignment
Uwu woopsie dawsy
We’d like to buy your field.
Why?
Uhh, special no reason...
🤣🤣🤣
Owner: why is my field glowing?
USGOVT: it is not.
I hear it makes music in the twilight hours.
That tree became Groot.
Aaand this is how Harrold from the Fallout series was born.
“a plane having technical difficulties”
hm interesting
“on board were two nuclear bombs”
holy shit
Oof that’s really bad
“Each were 200x the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
*holy fucking shit*
"I don't know which is worse: losing a nuclear weapon, or that it happens so often there's a term for it."
This isn't the first time america has lot a nuclear weapon
If there's a chance it will happen once, they have a name for it in the military. Glad you seen the movie broken arrow though...
A strategic theatre emergency
I feel the same about "friendly fire". I don't know of any other language that has a term for that.
Fk’em if they can’t take a joke.
It’s mind blowing to think about how many different times the world was almost destroyed, and how we’ll never know about majority of them.
My fave was the soviet guy with the nuclear warhead detection system in Russia during the cold war. His job was only to alert people when it beeped. However he was skeptical enough to wait. Turns out it detected the sunrise the sun rays to be exact. The only barrier between modern society and fallout irl was 1 guy who disobeyed orders.
We probably won’t know what happened when the world actually *does* get destroyed.
The entire cold war was two people bluffing each other and if it didn't work then the world would be destroyed.
@@Rainkit what 2 people?
@@fumothfan9 Heard that from "there may Never Ever be another man as powerful as Stanislav Petrov" video. Its always interesting to think about, then remember the guy from Hawaii who sounded the alarm and said "he was just doing his job".
The real hero of this story is the nuclear weapon’s parachute
His shoulders must hurt from fucking carrying the team
@@glorioustigereye no they hurt from carrying that massive fucking bomb lmao
Nukes like that, at that time, don't detonate on ground impact. They initiate in mid air. This results in a better spread of the fireball and it sucks up more dust/dirt/debris to make more stuff radioactive. Basically, they kill better if they go off in mid air. Its also *incredibly* difficult to get an actual nuclear initiation. A damaged bomb is unlikely to properly initiate. What you would be far more likely to get is a more conventional bomb like detonation (caused by the conventional explosives used to make the hydrogen fuse and initiate the actual nuclear reaction), that is incredibly radioactive.
Don't get me wrong. That still would have been *bad*. A "level of radiation release the likes of which would make Three Mile Island look positively tame", but it wouldn't have been a city buster.
The fact that so many failsafes didn't do their job is the real horror of this incident.
@@andrewgause6971 a failed nuke would be like a maassive dirty bomb, it would just spread the core all over the place rather than it being used up in the explosion. As you said, it would make three mile island look like nothing
@@madkills10 Aye. That is in essence what I was trying to say. ^^; I'm not always clear on such things.
"They were saved, in the end, by incredible good fortune, by luck, and by an ordinary, uncomplicated, low-voltage switch."
I mean, I'd argue they were *also* saved by numerous redundancy systems to prevent just such a thing. Hats off to the engineers who went "three switches are not enough, add a fourth." Without them, the luck wouldn't have been enough. I might have gone with eight switches, myself, but that call to over-switch the hell out of it saved a lot of lives.
Agreed. The non clickbait way they should have talked about the bombs in the story is "in both cases, one of the quadruple redundant safeties prevented any incident." Nukes are not like barrels of nitroglycerin that are ready to go off at the slightest provocation. Entire nations have been trying and failing to get them to go off correctly for almost a century.
@@whoisgtsdk I completely agree. I’m a little disappointed wit this video because it doesn’t feel as well researched as to WHY the US was doing this and how bombs work. They don’t just go off randomly.
Also, a little off topic and, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t WWII also cause a similar problem? Aren’t there a bunch of lost bombs around Europe that haven’t been found and are just hidden all over?
@@newmixgirl Yes, particularly in Germany, the news frequently gives an update or warning of some new bomb that's been uncovered and evacuations mandated. Some locals in certain towns are so used to it, they know what days of the week to get their "go-bags" ready for evac' notices...
It's potentially because of the Goldsboro incident that the U.S. military issued orders for planes to disarm the nuclear payloads entirely. Since then, it's been in practice that until orders are issued, the primary detonation triggers are extracted from the bombs and kept in an onboard safe. Once those orders are given, part of the bombardier's job is to go down and arm the bombs so they can be effectively dropped for combat reasons...
At this point, they literally can't possibly "go off" without intent to make them do so. ;o)
@@newmixgirl You should watch the British tv drama series Danger UXB.
Tbh i'd go the extra step and make a seperate facility that assembles bombs. Who tf ships an intact nuclear bomb. At least remove the nuclear material so if there is an explosion it won't be on a global scale.
You've made dozens of videos about horrific disasters, but it's this almost-disaster that I find most terrifying.
You've probably seen photos of mushroom clouds taken from the streets of Las Vegas. Those were at most 1/10 as powerful as the bombs that fell near Goldsboro. My mom was three months pregnant with me and lived about as close to the crash site as Las Vegas is to the Nevada test sites. FWIW the story makes the catastrophe seem more narrowly averted than it was. For one, there's a particular gaseous component that was required for a chain reaction. It was simply never pumped into the bomb unless the bomber was under orders to attack. Using that gas caused problems and the stockpile could not afford deliberate losses in training. There's also something about the capacitors were never charged, but I'm not as sanguine about that box on the checklist.
Two things stick with me about this, besides the obvious. First, if the conventional explosives would have detonated they would have made quite a plutonium/uranium mess, what we call a dirty bomb today. They could have made a radioactive super-fund site to put it lightly.
Second, it makes me wonder if anything like this happened in the Soviet Union. They were much more reckless about the dangers in general of nukes and enthusiastic about the potential of non-military nuclear detonations. They created a lake in Siberia that's useless because of radiation. The US did something similar to fracking in northwest Colorado. They detonated a device in a natural gas field. It released natural gas like they predicted, but it was radioactive and the worst exposure to radiation you can get is to breathe it. Being part of the flame on your stove would be meaningless to the radiation. I wouldn't be surprised if something buried in Russia will be discovered some day, something where they cleaned up the paper trail and cauterized the witnesses better than they buried the evidence.
@@cowboybob7093 actually there are several towns in Kazakshtan’s northen desert that have become “forbidden towns” for the amount of radiation and chemical pollution they took during soviet tests
There was this Minuteman Missal in a launch tube and a technician dropped a wrench.....
That's a scary one too.
@@Zoomie932 It was a Titan II missile. Links can be found on the Titan II Wikipedia page for starters.
Six hundredth and sixty-sixth thumbs up.
Muah hah ha ha hah.
Realtor sometime in the future: "This delightful plot of land just became available for purchase, it's at a bombasticly low price, its been owned by the US government since the 1960's..."
This bad boy plot of land can fit so many * slaps land *
just want you to know i appreciate the bombastic pun
Love Canal 2: The Irradiation
Don't put it past developers these days.
At that point
Time to Google!
Plane with two nukes on board, literally falling apart: "Let's head towards populated land, that's the safest option."
I agree, but they were following orders. Unfortunately, in the military individuals are not allowed to make their own decisions or use common sense, which is greatly discouraged.
@@meinthewild Yeah
@brmbly They're a lot smarter than us I wouldn't want to do that job.
@brmbly So are you so the average Joe isn't bright?
@brmbly They're flying aircrafts using advanced weapons and technology. Can you or any other civilian do that?
The nuke dangling from the tree just a few feet from the ground sounds absolutely terrifying. Almost like something from a looney toon.
"Sorry folks, we ran out of gas"
The one that hit the ground was more reassuring. It takes a very precisely directed "squeeze" of explosively triggered shock waves to detonate a nuclear weapon - its trigger charge is built almost like the lenses of a microscope, to focus the blast in a very specific spot at a very specific time. If even one "lens" goes out of alignment, the "squeeze" won't happen from every direction simultaneously, and the nuclear blast will fail. A fall from a large height, hard enough to ram the bomb six metres into the ground, would probably bend things way out of shape. That being said, if it had gone off it would still have created a sizable explosion (the trigger charge consists of several dozen kilograms of explosive, after all) and a radioactive mess as the nuclear core would have been spread all over the place.
It's probably a good thing that they had four independent safety barriers.
You don't understand nuclear bombs. It had to be armed, AND be fired to explode. Hitting the ground doesn't make a nuke go off. It has to be fired, which performs a very particular detonation to start nuclear fission. *These bombs were completely safe to be impacted to the ground* All ground impact would have done is destroyed them into bits, like a plane crash.
That tree saved my life
My papa was a teenager living in Goldsboro when this happened
Looney tune, US military … tomato, tomahto…
"Oh what's that stuck up in the tree over there?" " " Oh that, it's just a giant nuclear bomb hanging up there, no biggie."
Megaton circa 2299
“Sounds like a biggie to me”
Hell of an ornament. 😮
Turdrica
All I got from this video is “United States of America starts the most dangerous treasure hunt.”
I stopped watching at "Seymour Johnson". There's no way the rest of the video could beat that.
There are more nukes at large from incidents that couldn't be recovered...
I live about an hour away and was thinking what fun it would be to go dig this up
@A Stand User sorry we only use revolvers in the west but in the east they shoot m1911's
@@yakk13 word i live 29 mins from goldsboro and this is my first time hearing about this
Holy crap, thank you for this. I used to work for a TV station in Raleigh, and we did a report on this a few years back on its anniversary. It's shocking how few people in Goldsboro never knew that a bomb was literally dropped on their town.
hi, goldsboro citizen here, yep. I never knew about this. it’s terrifying. obviously i wasn’t alive at all, but i mean just knowing this happened in a place i grew up in is crazy.
I live in and you are correct lol
Agreed. I lived in Goldsboro when I was a kid/military brat. Until today, I had no idea this was part of Seymour Johnson’s history. Fascinating.
I grew up in Goldsboro in the 80s and I had heard that a plane carrying The Bomb had crashed a long time ago. That much seams to have been known in the area. What I think was unknown to the general public is how close to being fully armed either bomb was.
I lived in another Air Force town in the 90s (Travis AFB in NorCal) with a similar story under different circumstances. Given the thousands of nukes in the US arsenal, I get the feeling the Goldsboro incident may only be unique in the subsequent findings of how close to detonation the bombs were.
It actually happened in Fremont NC, not Goldsboro.
Crazy... If it wasn't for the low voltage switch, I wouldn't exist. My mom hadn't been born yet, but my dad was 2 years old.... He only lived two hours west of Goldsboro
Not necessarily true. Depending on wind, the worst your dad would've gotten would be nuclear fallout. Which would've lead to eventual terminal cancer. So its still possible you would've been born, but your dad would end up with a much shorter life span.
@@xander--doo4632 To be fair, his dad was only 2 years old.
He probably would have existed. He might’ve had 3 arms, but he would have existed.
It’s sad how so many people don’t know how many nuclear bombs are just chilling around the earth they haven’t been set so they just sit there this has been happening for a long time it isn’t something to freak out about I forgot how many nuclear bombs have been dropped accidentally on the United States they haven’t been set and those are only they ones that have been released to the public
you are all missing the point. noone born after that year would have existed. history would have changed so drastically that even conceptions from the same couples would have taken place under different circumstances.
imagine a timeline where these bombs did detonate, it'd be a big part of our history books, and having a state be abandoned as a no mans land is quite a thought.
It wouldn't have been abandoned. Wherever did you get that absurd idea?
@@stevenschnepp576 radiation bro
@@stevenschnepp576 tbh I could see Americans trying to repopulate the area, despite being warned of the risks lmao
@@Starstruck_Seven lol
@@RandomUA-cam123 How many people live in Nagasaki and Hiroshima today?
Alternative title: That time the US almost accidentally blew itself up
Seems fitting
😂😂😂
Lol you think its only happened once?
5 times*
@@Mimi-cq4bg XD Fair enough
Imagine owning a piece of land that the government were willing to pay any amount for
Here is the check, put how many zeroes you think it's worth, just don't ever speak about nor ask questions.
They could easily kill you and make it look like suicide
@@SugarRayValentine you sound like a CoNsPiRaCy tHeOrIsT
@@TomFromUA-cam if you believe everything government tells you then you are either an idiot or a child lol come on bro
Unfortunately eminent domain states that the gov can take any piece of land it wants at any time and pay 'fair market value' which is usually below actual market value. So no he didn't get a massive payout, he probably got evicted with barely enough money to buy a new house somewhere else.
And I thought I’d had a bad day at the office when I broke the pencil sharpener. Geezus.
LOL! No kidding!😄
Hope you're okay!
Lol, I set my work fire alarm off in the canteen today because I burnt my toast ..... It took a lot of convincing my boss to let us get a toaster in the first place 😂
Can you imagine walking in through the front door of your home after a day like that? All bedraggled, tie askew and your wife says;
“Hi honey, how was work.”
You’re like;
“Ohhhhh, well......... It could have gone a bit better. It could have gotten a lot worse. Pretty average day really. Pass me that cask of Scotch, I’m thirsty. Very thirsty.”
The post of the decade 'Bedraggled and all askew' Great terminology I love it!. Going to start using it.
I would love to see you talk about the Byford Dolphin diving bell accident at some point.
Second this. That’s some fascinating horror alright.
There’s not enough on the byford dolphin anywhere
Me too. That’s one incident that really makes me shudder.
That's crazy, I was just thinking about that before clicking on this video. Definitely an interesting one.
@@serenacelestine Yeah, especially the picture of the dismembered bodies of the divers
USAF: oops, lost my nuke again.
Civilians: *sweating* Again?
Soviet Union: Suck it up, we've lost dozens of easily portable nuclear weapons.
What?
Fascinating Horror: Here's how the US nearly destroyed itself with a series of small but deadly mistakes.
Me: **hehe i live there**
Right? I tell everybody our state is rich in history.lol
LMAOoo
Like the kid on the runaway bus in the Simpsons... *tee hee...I'm in danger!*
Yeah, hilarious...hmm
Insert Ralph meme:
"*Chuckles* I'm in danger. :D"
I hate how we just bury our problems in the ground like they won't come back one way or another.
Yeah
groundwater? What’s that?
The only thing left was the shell, explosives, and electronics. The core was pulled... it's not that dangerous ...well except for the fact its a fairly large lump of high explosives.
theelephant'sfoot.jpeg
@@swiiftykat What's left to contaminate it?
You say that like the radioactives didn't come from the ground.
I’ve lived in Goldsboro for 10 years and I’m just now learning about this! It’s still a very hushed story, especially since no one I know has heard of this story.
facts! i li Ed out there too im jus hearing about it as well
You folks need to read more. This has been public knowledge for a LONG time. The book is EXCELLENT.
That's okay there is still a bomb lost off the coast of Georgia that people seem to have forgotten about. It was being transported when the plane had issues so they dropped it in the ocean in case they crash landed. It's never been recovered.
Hopefully that low voltage switch received the Medal of Honor, posthumously , of course.
Honestly
I think the tree should have received one as well. Getting tangled in the branches was probably a softer landing than hitting the ground with a chute.
@@affsteak3530 Hitting the ground would probably have been safer. The warhead of a nuclear bomb consists of several "blast lenses" arranged around the nuclear core, which consist of carefully shaped plastic explosives and detonators aligned very precisely to direct the trigger blast onto the core from every direction at exactly the same moment. If one blast lens is knocked out of alignment, or a detonator damaged so it doesn't trigger at the exactly right moment, the blast becomes asymmetric and a nuclear explosion doesn't happen. The other bomb that hit the ground probably got a real dent from the impact, making it incapable of causing a nuclear explosion.
That being said, the trigger charges consist of several dozen kilograms of explosives, so there would have been a rather large bang and radioactive material scattering everywhere if it had gone off. It was probably for the best that they had four safety switches.
Dad: Son,go dig some worms for fishing.
Son: hey dad look at the size of these worms and they glow!!!!
Always did wonder where those gummy wormbaits came from....I think you might have something there! :P
@@RICDirector🦠🐟
There's an old radio show from like the 30s that had is similar idea except instead of nuclear shit it was hormones. I believe it's called 'the worms'. 🤣🤷♂️
Look dad! This ones made of metal!
ah yes, mid air disintegration, my favorite technical difficulty
It's extremely difficult for a nuclear bomb to explode unintentionally, as it only has one specific way to detonate but this was certainly a close call.
Yeah, it's a pet peeve of mine when people assume they explode on impact with the ground the way conventional TNT does. Ironically, as far as I know, detonating them miles above the ground does more damage to cities because the blast/heat wave isn't quickly absorbed by the terrain.
@@awesometwitchy The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs once armed were detonated at 500 feet above the ground for the reasons you say.They may have had impact fuses as back up possibly ?I would have that as part of the design myself if it were possible? Having said that alot of conventional impact fused WW2 bombs failed to explode due to violent impact?The Germans had alot still being found underground in the UK to this day.
Can’t the non-nuclear part still detonate and still release some radioactive material? Apparently in the Spain incident, the conventional explosion on two of them still blew up and contaminated slightly more than 3/4ths of a square mile.
I don’t know how the switches work but if the two parts of the radioactive material come together to form a critical mass an uncontrollable reaction occurs and the bomb detonates.
@@rogue_asami4522 The conventional explosives inside the bomb send the nuclear material inwards, and it is a type of explosive that does not go off except under very special circumstances, so unless those special requirements are met, it would not go off.
My then 1-year old mother lived about 15 minutes from where this happened. She never even knew until I saw a documentary on it a few years back and told her. I lived in nearby Rocky Mount myself until I was 13. Not likely that either of us would be here if it had worked out differently.
My dad was 1 about 30 minutes from Goldsboro
It is my understanding, as a past EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) technician, that no atomic or nuclear device is allowed to be armed when carried in flight, or otherwise transported, over U S territory leaving the worst possible scenario to be decontamination clean up. The only exception has been when test dropping during which arming is only allowed at the time of the drop.
the anxiety that nuclear weapons give me is unmatched
Stop worrying and love the bomb.
Absolutely warranted
Developing the ability to drop the sun on each other was one of our worst decisions, right up there with eating fermented fruits.
@@AtaMarKat fermented fruits are good for humans (www.reallifeofpie.com/blog/2018/7/12/an-in-depth-look-at-how-to-ferment-fruit-why ) and so are nuclear bombs. WW2 ended thanks to nuclear bombs, and WW3 never happened thanks to nuclear bombs. I bet you think you’re an extraordinarily good person, but really you’re among the worst. You’re dangerously stupid.
@@kevin6293 ending a war by levelling 2 cities will still never be moral, if it had been two American cities that this had happened to I imagine the rest of the world would have never heard the end of it. Its also less than 100 years since ww2, we've barely had time for ww3 yet but that doesn't mean it won't happen and won't be utterly catastrophic as a result of nuclear bombs
Fascinating Horror: 1st off, love your channel AND your narration. Would you ever consider doing a video on the 1956 disappearance of a B25 bomber in the icy Monongahela River, 4 of the flight crew survived, 2 died but they have never found the plane or what it was carrying, *despite* knowing EXACTLY where it crashed in only 20 feet of water, *OR* a video on the deadly Donora fog of 1948. I've really never seen either of these covered. This Pittsburgh yinzer thanks you for considering n'at.😉
Fellow yinzer here! When I saw the title of this video, I thought of the SAME exact thing!!
@@Shadowclaw27 [I'm] smilin' like a butcher's dog!😉
I never heard of either and have lived near Pittsburgh for most of my 62 years.
@Oreo Cookie It was smog from a zinc smelting plant that covered a town in Pennsylvania. A lot of people credit it as one of the things that started the environmental movement in the US. It would be a good topic for an episode too...
@ in 1948, a temperature inversion trapped nitrogen dioxide, sulfuric acid, and fluorine emitted from the zinc smelting plant in town close to the ground, causing death, panic and long term injuries to the people of the small Mon Valley town. The story deserves to be told. I am hopeful that it will be.
I firmly believe the person who wrote that report making the pop culture reference and masking the seriousness of it with dark humor was me in a previous life.
He's still alive...
I think the guy still lives lol
@@Unbeeliever some say with reincarnation you could pass by someone of your previous life without even realizeing it. Why is there a rule that says your previous life has to die first. It's quantum shit. Anything is possible.
Look up the egg by kursgakts in a nutshell. Interesting theory about it.
@@lanewright1143 if that’s actually possible I am best friends with my current/previous past life or come from the same previous past life. We are basically the same person she’s just a bit gayer.
Holy, 'a bomb powerful enough to reconfigure the East coast of America, drifted slowly earthwards' - let that sink in.
If that thing went off I don't think I would've ever been born
Yeah it’s a bit of an over exaggeration....
and that was 1961, imagine what they got today.
That's an extreme exaggeration, to be fair. Even bombs with megatons in the double digits don't change landmasses in any significant way beyond a several miles wide crater in large ones. I'm pretty sure like 90% of the energy released in multi-megaton bombs just quickly rises into the atmosphere as a gargantuan fireball that splits the sky open and forms rings of clouds, lightning strikes, and blinding light. Most countries have moved to smaller nuclear devices for practical reasons. Well, a "small" nuclear weapon is still orders of magnitude more powerful than any conventional explosion lol but you know what I mean.
@@_LunarLillies_ same here, I live 4 hrs from Goldsboro
Omg- that intro music is back... I love that little tune... hum to myself all day sometimes 😄
It's so haunting
I look forward to it.
He uses this tune for his longer videos ... longer than 5 mins.
I'd really like some background music on the narration as well. It's awkwardly silent
It used to be as such
I remember reading somewhere, and I'm paraphrasing here "That switch is the reason there isn't a bay where North Carolina is today"
nuclear bombs aren't that powerful at all.
Congratulations on your first sponsor!! You’re a very underrated channel, I’m glad you’re getting a bit more of the attention you deserve.
This is one of the most famous 'broken arrow' incidents just because of the failure of the SAFF (Safing, Arming, Fuzing, and Firing), but my favourite is the Mars Bluffs one were they accidently dropped a bomb on South Carolina. The reason why it's my favourite is because of the interview in the film Nuclear 911 of the lovely southern gent whose house it fell on he's so understated and low key considering all 3 of his kids himself and his wife were injured in the incident and his house virtually flattened.
Been to the original crash site. Overgrown now but you can still see the crater and imagine the bomb still buried at the bottom
That tree deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor. Respect.
imagine being a bomb disposal expert dispatched to a nuclear bomb site
*tee hee...I'm in danger!*
Honestly, nukes are pretty hard to detonate and are designed to not explode except when everything goes right. The radiation would be an issue, but unless it went off when it hit you just need to remove the detonator and it's about as safe as it ever was. Stressful, but probably not a really hard job. Interesting contrast.
Butt-Pucker Level: 1000
@@morganrobinson8042 They probably didn't remove the shape charges which is the detonator. They removed the core which is the most valuable and dangerous piece of a nuke.
Imagine finding the arm/safe switch set to arm lol
man, ive been binge watching this channel when possible for three days and i have to say you’ve done an amazing job on each video. go ahead and get that sponsor, legend. thank you so much for your work and dedication to the videos.
I started yesterday and it's addictive.
“And oddly relaxing, even when you’re learning about darker subjects.” This is something your channel does rlly well too.
I can watch your videos when I’m feeling stressed, overstimulated, and even as I get ready for bed.
I can't state enough how amused I am by the fact that they made reference to strangelove in this scenario
It’s not uncommon in high stress work environments and internal classified reports..... when you have to factor deaths in the thousands... or mega-deaths.... a black sense of humor takes hold.
I'm kinda disappointed they steamrolled over the irony in the title though. The report's title is enough for a reference but pretty much orphans the grim humor of loving the bomb.
At least no one rode the bomb down 👌
Have you ever thought about turning this into a podcast? I'd love to listen while at work!
Oh that would be lit, I listen to this while I drive anyways.
03:58 "For several minutes, a bomb powerful enough to _reconfigure_ the east coast of America drifted slowly earthwards."
I love your eloquence in the face of a severe nuclear disaster 😂😘
How come nobody is talking about this dude's name is SEYMOUR JOHNSON. Somebody go arrest his parents
Lol I knew a kid named willie seaman and I always wondered how his parents could hate a baby
No shit, a Mr Harold (Harry) Weiner was a teacher at a local grade school many years ago.
No, Seymour Johnson is the name of the Air Force Base located in Goldsboro, NC
@@TheLittleTwilight - Be that as it may, the AFB was named in honor of Seymour Johnson, a Navy vet from Goldsboro, NC. Either way, Seymour Johnson is an awesome/horrible name.
@@OomaGooma would it make it better if I told you that Seymour Johnson was just 2 hours away from...Morehead City?
You do a good job finding less reported on disasters/events! I’m always impressed to hear stories I haven’t before.
Having recently discovered this channel I've watched some fascinating videos.
This is probably the scariest one yet, it makes you wonder why exactly the US airforce felt it necessary to carry live nuclear bombs, particularly on such a dodgy airframe.
Good job on finding these obscure incidents. Maybe these could be interesting topics for a future video, some of these incidents are so messed up and also not much known:
- Transvaal Park Disaster
- Aeroflot flight 6502 (Crashed after the pilots intentionally put the blinds on the cockpit window as a bet)
- Fire and Sinking of the M/V Doña Paz
- Six Flags Haunted Castle fire :
(Worst amusement park disaster in the United States)
- Bocaue Floating Pagoda tragedy:
(this is extremely chaotic, unfolding in so many disasterous stages; from a stray firecracker, onboard fire, stampede, pagoda sinking, pagoda collapse, electecution and generator explosion, killing 250+ people)
- The windscale radiation fire:
(U.Ks worst radiation disaster)
- 2018 Table rock lake duck boat accident
I'd also add some other obscure and messed up ones that'd be worth analysis
-The Ramstein Air Show Disaster (A Mid Air collision involving 3 aerobatic planes that lead to one of the planes crashing and exploding into a large crowd of spectators and the namesake of German metal band Rammstein)
-The Mexico City LP Gas Fire of 1984 (A gas storage facility near a heavily populated suburb of Mexico City exploding and wiping out the area with a nuclear sized blast)
-The Joelma Building Fire (The second largest lost of life in a high rise building fire)
-Sunset Limited and Granville Rail Disasters
-Batter Sea Fun Fair Disaster (The worst roller coaster accident in history)
-Aeroflot Flight 593 (Plane crash caused by the pilot's son turning off the autopilot)
@@DaimosZ yeah, that would be nice. But as an avaition enthusiast aeroflot flight 593 seems to be too overdone, rehashed or covered by other channels. Same with the ramenstein disaster. BUt the Lviv airshow disaster could be nice topic since it is not that frequently discussed.
@@juliusnepos6013 fair enough, and Flight 6502 is similar to it but rarely talked about so that may be better
@@DaimosZ Yes, and so far none is covering flight 6502 extensively as of now, so it could be interesting.
@@DaimosZ He did the Batter Sea Fun Fair ua-cam.com/video/FegIqGEffo0/v-deo.html
Wow I always assumed, (or hoped) that it was rather difficult to accidentally detonate a nuclear bomb
Pretty sure it is nowadays.
@@SirDankleberry never underestimate the incompetence of bureaucracy
It is
Well, it does seem pretty difficult. Even through five B-52 crashes, not one bomb detonated.
The miracle would have been a detonation. Explosives and crashes wont do it, It just doesnt work that way.
TIL the US actually almost nuked itself..... Holy shit imagine how drastically this would have changed the entire world.
Nope.
Wouled have changed the entire world for the better.
The title of this video undersells the content. What a story.
If that had happened today, there is no way that would have been kept secret like it did back then. I am completely speechless on the fact that I never even knew about this incident. I served in the Air Force as security police and worked along side others who were enlisted much longer than me and had been all over. Aircraft security was a big part of our job and lots of stories were told. Never was this story mentioned. I found this shockingly interesting for sure.
Thanks!
MAN when you go "I kinda just want another Fascinating Horror video" and then you get one on your birthday!!! Thank you for the pleasant coincidence!!!
I like what John Oliver said about that: Did you know that we once almost nuked one of the Carolinas? Good thing we have two of them!
A SPARE IN CASE THE FIRST DIDNT GO OFF
SEEMS LIKE GOOD JOB THE SECOND DIDNT GO OFF
SEEMS LIKE GOOD OLD US OF A WAS TRYING TO DESTROY IT SELF IN 61 STILL AT IT TODAY 2021
That was a terrifying episode but the 'Pizza' & 'Singing Nuclear Commander' were also hilarious 😂 😂
As I remember hearing it when I was in the Air Force, one of the Goldsboro bombs has sustained damage that brought two components within the arming mechanism to within a quarter inch of contact, which would begin the firing sequence.
Also "oddly relaxing even when learning about darker subjects" aptly describes your channel
It’s crazy how much I’ve learned off UA-cam alone than I have in school 🤔 .
fr
You are not meant to learn anything at school x you are being conditioned to conform x wake up x there is an agenda here x don't you know?
This story is BEYOND BELIEF 😮. How have I never heard of this?! 😳🤦♂️
even planes get shaky and leaky when they get old apparently
In 1961 this plane would not have been old. Maybe 5-6 years old. The average age of aircraft across the USAF now is around 30 years.
@@jaimiebanks3179 plane reached puberty
Well, if flying your plane is ever akin to playing pool with a rope, you should probably start panicking. ;o)
OP seems to have perfectly described the President Elect...
But the thing is that the plane was only 6 years old. I bet you it was poor design, haphazardly assembled to make money out of a government contract.
Hoooly shit. I need a cigarette after this one and I dont even smoke. My anxiety is through the roof about those bombs. Lol
I quit smoking three years ago and here I am, half a pack deep on this mans channel lol
@@jamesspooky9488 LOL You replied while i was watching another one of his vids 😂 Why do we do this to ourselves?! 💀
@CleoPhoenix. Here's one for your anxiety. The year 2029. What about the year 2029? The 'Potato Asteroid'. Google it.
@@rogerrendzak8055 oh nooooo, thats not the type of potato I like. I've always been pro thanos snap tho, this planet is already f*kd.
@@CleoPhoenixRT Thanos snap is literally goals lmao 😂
The nuke: *falling*
The parachute: “STOP RIGHT THERE PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”
"Seymore Johnson"
I'm sorry, did Bart Simpson name that?
That REALLY IS the name of the Air Force Base, although I think it is spelled _"Seymour."_ 😊
A proctologist named Seymour Butts...
Moe: Hey, I wanna Seymour Johnson!
Barney: Try the men's room!
Seymore! The plane's falling apart!
No mother, it's just the northern lights.
So two bombs suddenly arm themselves and everybody thinks it is normal?
yeah talk about poor safety precautions holy shit
@@polosolo9403 and the other switch was the only one standing in the way between this incidents obscurity to complete infamy in history.
@Guy Incognito 5:53
Right? The word "sabotage" was never brought up as a possibility, especially given the Cold War tension back then. Seems sketchy that no-one thought to investigate how two nuclear warheads just accidentally armed themselves mid-flight.
I speculate the fuel leak and subsequent disintegration of the plane was to insure the bombs dropped & detonated.
It really was a miracle that the bombs did not detonate.
I was honestly wondering if sabotage had a role to play. It was the cold war after all.
I really love that he keeps sponsors at the end. Amazing video, man.
Snap... i almost wasn't born. My grandma was living in Goldsboro at that time. My pops came into existence 5 years after this event.
I was there, but still inside my mom! I wrote a comment here about it. I didn't just dodge a bullet. I dodged two nuclear bombs.🤯
obsessed with these videos.
Same
@Break Bread absolutely!!
Been knowing about this for over 40years. My dad told me about it when I was young.
I’d like to suggest “black Sunday” at Kings Island in Mason, Ohio for a future video
I've never heard of black Sunday. I've held a pass there most of my life. Can't wait to learn about this!
Now done
@@meganconard9795 Search his videos, he made it a few weeks back.
Can you look into the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino fire? It occurred on Friday, November 21, 1980 in Las Vegas, NV, where 87 people died. There was also another hotel fire a few months later.
85 sacrifices.
@@buddywilliams5650 tell me what you mean please x to satan?
Just wanted to comment on your excellent writing style and varied storytelling abilities. Not to mention your effective narration inflection. I've noticed channels similar to yours suffer from repetitive and formulaic writing structures that quickly become a point of frustration, as well as very contrived and laboured narration in an attempt to sound simultaneously ominous, yet professional. Your work pulls it all together beautifully. Keep up the awesome content!
Thanks for digging the details of these incidents up. This one was an *extremely* close call.
I love watching these videos I cant even think about how much time you put into these videos to make them so good and your voice is so nice to listen to I'd honestly love to listen to a podcast from you if you ever made one
The fact that a US plane flying over their own national soil carrying two bombs this insanely destructive was a "routine operation" in 1961 (as was the subsequent cover-up) is, to me, the most horrifying part of this story...? 😱
From 1960 - 1968 there was a program that had B-52s flying 24/7 with nukes on board over North America. Look up Operation Chrome Dome.
They had tens of thousands at this point in time, the Soviets even more. What, do you think they sit in bunkers all year long?
Given the size of the bombs, how would you have expected them to be transported? Armored vehicle convoy shutting down huge segments of the highway in front and behind as they slowly drive across the country with a massive disrupting to traffic and almost an advertisement that serious nuclear bombs were being moved? Rail with the same kind of area restrictions? I mean they went by air because that's how they were intended to be delivered so that would naturally be the most secure method of transporting them. The safeties worked, despite some failing, they prevented detonation. The missing warhead is still intact or else it'd be detectable for recovery and removal. The only actual horror of this is the men dying in the plane crash as nothing else happened to anyone else.
@@nochannel1q2321horseback obviously
@@nochannel1q2321 the bombs weren't being "transported". They had their plutonium cores in them. They were live bombs. At this time there were nuclear-armed B-52s in the air over the US continuously, to provide a "credible retaliatory strike capability": Operation Chrome Dome. It was insanity. With all that aviation, accidents were bound to happen and did happen. Insufficient thought had been given to that possibility. The safeties _only just_ worked in this case. Nuclear weapons are the horror.
Living in Goldsboro, I find this accident kinda un-nerving. Especially the part where there is still technically an H-Bomb buried in the mud, in a field somewhere nearby. Seymour Johnson AFB is still here. They fly the F-15's and Air Refuelers now. The Cold War era is filled with a lot of scary "almost" stories. It's truly a wonder that we are still here to talk about it.
This is awesome! Finally a local story. This is the first time hearing about this! I’m highly interested in the long term effects of this event.
Of all the videos and articles I've seen on this incident, this is the first one I've seen that covers the cause of the crash, and the fate of the crew members. Excellent video 👌
4:00 From there onwards I will refer to nuclear weapons as Landscape Reconfiguration Devices.
Technically correct is the best kind of correct
Might want to read about Project Plowshare, then.The US tried to do exactly that. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
@@andrewhawkins6754 soviets too. There is at least 1 atomic crater turned into lake in Kazakhstan.
Thx for the link btw, never heard of it. )
@@crafty_badger Yeah, I knew they had as well. I almost went back to edit my reply to add that in
im obsessed with your videos!!! i always get so excited when u upload haha
I'm thrilled to see you have a sponsor for this one :)
why have you stopped playing the music during the video, its what makes the videos more chilling.
It's corny I like just the facts no extra bs just the story that's where the horror lies within the words spoken
Yeah same. I do love eerie music in videos like these but the fact that there’s no music in this one actually makes it better. Just his voice and your own mind making the noise.
Same!
This is one of those stories that makes me let out panicked little laughs because you know you should be relieved but you're shitting bricks all the same.
I remember the 1961 Yuba City, CA nuclear air crash when it happened. The following is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on this incident: "On 14 March 1961 an aircraft accident occurred near Yuba City, California. A United States Air Force B-52F-70-BW Stratofortress bomber, AF Serial No. 57-0166, c/n 464155, carrying two nuclear weapons departed from Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento. According to the official Air Force report, the aircraft experienced an uncontrolled decompression that required it to descend to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in order to lower the cabin altitude.Increased fuel consumption caused by having to fly at lower altitude, combined with the inability to rendezvous with a tanker in time caused the aircraft to run out of fuel. The aircrew ejected safely, and then the unmanned aircraft crashed 15 miles (24 km) west of Yuba City,[1] tearing the nuclear weapons from the aircraft on impact. However, in a 2012 book LTC Earl McGill, a retired SAC B-52 pilot, claims that the aircrew, after an inflight refueling session that provided inadequate fuel, refused the offer of an additional, unscheduled inflight refueling, bypassed possible emergency landing fields and ran out of fuel.[2] The crew ejected, the aircraft broke up and four onboard nuclear weapons were released. The weapons' multiple safety interlocks prevented both a nuclear explosion and release of radioactive material. LTC McGill, based on his SAC experience, blames the aircrew failures on the use of dexedrine to overcome tiredness on the 24-hour flight preceding the accident.
The weapons did not detonate as their safety devices worked properly.[3] A fireman was killed and several others injured in a road accident while en route to the accident scene.[1]"
All we knew at the time was that an Air Force plane had crashed. It was many years later we found out it was nuclear in nature. To this day it seems very strange to me that this plane, considering what was happening to it at the time, did not immediately land at Beale AFB, which is just a couple of miles outside of Yuba City and had more than adequate runway space to accommodate this plane as well as being a Strategic Air Command base as was Mather at that time, instead choosing to attempt to return to Mather about 40 or so more miles to the South.
This channel has yet to disappoint.
Would you ever discuss the Graniteville, SC chlorine train incident? Your perspective would be amazing
This one today is so good
I'm curious about that as well, I've never heard of it
@@michibmoon it's crazy. A train in SC full of chlorine crashed and poisoned people for miles. That on top of communication problems. It would make a good episode
@@user-hm9uq8gk5x oh wow, I looked it up and it happened in 2005. I have a friend who is from Aiken which is close to Graniteville I wonder if her or her parents remember about it or were involved
I live an hour west of Goldsboro, near Raleigh. My family owns a farm near Goldsboro in Bullhead, North Carolina. It's amazing my family didn't get wiped out and I am here to tell this story today. If either bomb had detonated, I would not exist today.
“Not great, it’s on ‘arm’” what a chilling sentence
The bomb dangling sounds exactly like adventure time
1:48 *sees the title and laughs nervously because I live near there but also because I was born on that day*
This sounds like a good start to an alternate history novel.
To answer the people asking “how is that a routine operation?!” It was 1961, one of the many high points of the Cold War (although certainly not the highest) and the United States had a plan to keep a certain amount of B-52’s, at certain places, at certain times in the air to ensure rapid (as rapid as a sub-sonic strategic bomber can be) response in case of a nuclear strike as this was slightly before nuclear ICBM’s had fully taken over warhead deliveries. I’m only going off of memory, so I could be incorrect in a few places but I hope this helps.
Yes it was an initiative of Curtis LeMay
This is the first time I’ve been genuinely interested in a UA-camr’s sponsor! Very interesting and something I’m going to check out!
I love how your ad read sounds just as dark and dire as the rest of your video.
"Low hanging fruit" will never be the same again.
Something about the music in the background of your videos...it gets stuck in my head and plays on repeat all day after I watch one of your videos. Love them
It would be interesting to see a video about the National Harbor MGM accident where a little girl touched a railing that had been accidentally pumped full of electricity. It could be interesting to know exactly what happened and why it could have been avoided.
HOLY MOLY! I'd never heard of this incident before. What a terrifying thoughts...the "what ifs".😳😳😳
Not the air force made named "See More Johnson" 😂💀
😂😂😂
So you're telling me I lived 30 minutes away from Goldsboro, went there or through there hundreds of times, and been on the base and never knew of this or heard anyone talk about it? Wtf